


Like Winds on the Sea

by Aeolian_Harp189



Series: Starry Eyed Dreamers [2]
Category: Danny Phantom, Gravity Falls, One Piece, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: ADVENTURE!, Drama, F/M, Pretty Scenery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-01-26 23:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12569028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeolian_Harp189/pseuds/Aeolian_Harp189
Summary: Dipper, Mabel and Danny are on a mission that will take them through the dangerous, strange and hellish world of the Ghost Zone. But they need to find their friends, hunt down a demon and get some answers along the way. That WAS plan but when have plans ever worked out so neatly? Meanwhile, a laughing Muse of Nightmares makes wide-eyed frightened puppets dance for her, a band of rowdy pirates are looking for a good time and a girl with hair like summer wheat and eyes like two lost pieces of the afternoon sky is lost in a wood that is slowly eating her alive.





	1. Swimming in Ink

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! :)

Once upon a time there was a world made of water.   
And on this blanket of never-ending blue,   
there floated a ship carrying a strange little crew.  
Like naïve little lambs being led to the slaughter   
Didn’t know we were using them as canon fodder…

 

The woods are insidious; they eat you from the inside out. They are calm, patient and persistent, which is perhaps the worst part of it. You thrash, you scream, you run with all your might but no matter how far and how fast you move, it is like a predator that saunters casually in your wake, a smug little smile on its face, a relaxed swing to its step. ‘Go on’ it says, ‘run all you want. I shall have you in the end.’ And it is right, it is always right. When the woods wants you, it will have you, always will it have you in the end. 

There used to be others with me, a tiny hand that was mine to hold, a smile that was fashioned only for me. What happened to them? It is hard to remember. I am alone now and there is only myself and the forest. Sometimes I can still hear them when the icy wind sways between the brittle leaves, when the cold night bites into my fingers and toes, when the moon is full like a silver coin, I can hear the little boy laughing, whose hand was once mine to hold, whose eyes once shone only for me. On those quiet nights when I can laugh along with the boy, it is easy to forget the eyes of the forest watching me, waiting for me. But it is hard to forget for long. 

 

The Ghost Zone. Dipper wasn’t sure what he was anticipating, hellfire and brimstone maybe but he was certain it wasn’t this. A void as black as freshly spilled ink, mixed with swirling shades of that ever-present luminous green carried on in every direction. It was like swimming through a vat of oil; there was no up, no down, no weight to orient yourself by. The initial overwhelming sensation that he was suspended underwater made Dipper clutch at his throat in a moment of panic, wondering if he could indeed breath. After a frightening, wrestling moment of doubt, he found he could force the air into his lungs, though it was sluggish and stale and breathing felt uncomfortably like he was swallowing something much heavier than air but after a few struggling breathes his lungs were satisfied by the unusual substance and he thought it best not to question it. 

Beside him, Danny breathed a sigh of contentment; he saw the boy’s shoulders sag a little and a smile touch his face. Dipper stared at the boy in bewilderment and when Danny caught Dipper’s confused expression he laughed.   
“I know, I know, I know. The Ghost Zone isn’t exactly a pleasant looking place.” He said, as a clustered pack of wailing, empty eyed, green glowing ghosts no bigger than Dipper’s palm fluttered by in a tightly knitted formation and Danny had to grab Dipper’s hand and hoist him out of their way. A chill ran down Dipper’s spine when the ghosts passed him, wailing and miserable, a sensation like he had been slashed with cold water rattled his bones. He looked up at Danny, waiting for the ‘but’ statement to arrive. 

“But,” Danny said faithfully. “It’s where a part of me belongs. You can’t help feeling attachment for the place you came from.” Danny said with a small smile and Dipper gazed into his friends green eyes that matched the green of the abyss so perfectly and Dipper felt like he could understand him.   
“Damn it all.” Mabel cursed, tucking her legs under her subconsciously. “I should have worn pants.”   
Danny laughed, “Don’t worry. We’re stopping at my door before we head out. I have pants there you can borrow.” 

“Your door?” Mabel asked, as Danny tugged at the ropes that the three of them had tied around their waists to connect them together and they started to drift through the black abyss, Danny’s tail fluttering behind him as he flew and the twins dragging along with very little resistance like a pair of tethered balloons. Occasionally they passed something solid that was floating through the emptiness, ranging from stray elements of their own world: cans of soup, shopping carts, broken dolls and car keys to whole islands that seemed to be broken off pieces of other worlds. Looking down upon the islands Dipper could see rippling forests that moaned in the icy wind, lakes frozen over with a suspicious broken hole in the center of it like something had fallen in. There were whole villages of shuffling ghosts, dreary eyed and zombie like, half crumbling castles, broken towers where the scaly back of a monster could be seen rising and falling, administrative buildings where men in business suits and nooses endless slaved and skull shaped caves with grinning lichen ridden teeth. 

There were suspended balls of greenish glowing water where skeleton mermaids swam, sharp toothed fish nibbling at their half rotten flesh, phantom lights with nothing attached to it, hovering banquet tables with the meal all prepared where a group of knightly ghosts all sat with slit throats and arrows imbedded into backs. There were mountains with snowy peaks and bridges forged from ice. There were walls with heads on spikes that wailed and cried their own innocents, too little, too late and ghosts that lay tangled in a sea of rusted chains. There were stairways that spiraled and went nowhere and globs of greenish goo that floated mindlessly through the air. And through it all hovered the doors, doors attached to nothing, of every make and model, every age and every state of decay. There seemed to be no order or state of reason for the arrangement of things, buildings, empty chunks of island floated like clouds and lost things from every era in time floated in between. 

The ghosts they saw most frequently were the small formless green kind, they moved in packs and seemed to be having an awful time, moaning and wailing a sorrowful tune as they went. At first Dipper flinched every time a flock swooped past them but soon he realized that these creatures seemed more skittish than the ones he had met at the circus. They were quick to dart out of their way and they parted for Danny like the waves parting on stones. When they finally did come close to a fully formed ghost, a grey woman in a business suit, a briefcase and a hole in her trachea where smoke continued to billow from a cigarette she stoutly continued to smoke and fluttering tail where her business skirt ended, Danny and she did not address each other. They glared at each other like a pair of predators meeting at the waterhole, giving each other a wide birth but never taking their eyes from one another. The woman’s bright red eyes settled on Dipper and Mabel, glinting with something like hunger and catching her gaze, Danny made a strange sound. 

Not exactly a hiss or a growl, nothing so animalistic, it was something deeper than that. It was as though Danny had managed to turn into sound the feeling of hairs standing up on the back of your neck, of the sensation that something was in a dark room with you, watching you and hungry though you couldn’t see it. It was the taste of horror in your mouth and Dipper shuddered when he heard the sound leak from between his friend’s bared teeth. The woman cowed, hunching her shoulders and fluttering behind one of the nearby floating islands, no bigger than an asteroid until Danny and the twins had passed her by.   
“What was that about?” Mabel asked and Danny looked down at her confused. 

“What? Oh her? Ghosts have the tendency to be…vicious, if you let them.” Danny said, “some can be nice though, you just have to stay on your guard around here. Ah, there it is.”   
Danny pointed to a floating door with chipped white paint and a paper sign fluttering faintly that read in a childish scrawl ‘Keep out’. They glided gracefully up to the door; Danny hesitated for a moment, his gloved hand rested on the dinted door handle before giving it a turn. Stepping through the door, the concept of gravity instantly hit Dipper and Mabel with wobbling uncertainty and Danny had to grab the two of them to keep them from falling back into the black abyss of the Ghost Zone. He led them inside and shut the door quickly behind them and all of sudden the Ghost Zone was gone. 

Sunshine streamed in through the open window, pooling on the blue carpet on the floor in a golden puddle with dust particles floating calmly in its rays. It was a bedroom, extremely monk like in its proportions. A narrow bed stood in the center of the room, a chest was seated at its base, and a bookshelf above the desk was stuffed with books about astronomy, ghosts, physics and gothic poetry (interesting combination). A single lamp hung from the ceiling, the walls were a dull shade of brick, the closet door hung open to reveal a bland selection of hand me down clothes. Peeling posters hung from the walls of rock bands that ranged from classic to horrific and stacks of overdue library books (probably way, way WAY overdo now) stuffed themselves everywhere, under the bed, under the desk, behind the door. The air was fresh, wafting in through the window from the distant park where birds could be heard chattering. Danny stood in the middle of the room for a moment, blinking rapidly. 

“Dan-” Mabel began but Danny shushed her, listening hard. A faint murmur of conversation could be heard below them, the clatter of dishes, a pause and a booming male laugh that seemed to make the walls shake. Danny smiled softly and walked over to the window. Mabel and Dipper, still attached to Danny’s waist, were forced to follow him. Beyond the window lay a forested city where trees blossomed in between the buildings. Down below across the street two teenagers sat, chatting merrily. The girl was made of pure black, from her makeup to her clothes to her brooding expression. The other boy had darker skin than the girl but out matched her in brightness elsewhere, his cap was bright red, his shirt was bright yellow and his enthusiasm for their topic of conversation lit him up in a way the reserved girl didn’t seem willing to relate to. Danny stared out over the town with an unreadable expression. 

“Why don’t you go out there?” Mabel asked and Danny smirked gently at her as he phased out of the ropes binding the three of them.   
“It’s just an illusion. I made all of it. My own little world.” A soft dreamy smile touched his lips as he ran a hand over one of the poster, flattening its curling edges uselessly. “But the illusion doesn’t extend beyond this room. If you stepped out that window you’d just fall back into the Ghost Zone.”   
Shaking himself out of whatever reverie he had fallen into, Danny went to the closet and started rummaging through his things.   
“This stuff on the other hand is very real. I used to bring stuff from the human world and stash it here.” A pair of jeans flew over his shoulder and smack Mabel roughly in the face, making Dipper laugh. 

Prying the fabric from her face so that her hair stood on end in little frizzy wisps, she took the jeans and smacked Dipper playfully with them before something caught her eye.   
“Hey, is this you?” She asked, lifting a little framed picture from the desk. In it were three teenagers dressed up in leather and chains and the same black t-shirt depicting a rather frightening looking metal band. Despite their rather grim attire, all three of them beamed with eyes brimming with excitement. The boy on the left and the girl on the right were clearly the teenagers they had spotted out the window, the people Dipper had to assume were Tucker and Sam (who else could they be?). The boy in the middle, with his arms hanging off the necks of the other two, looked like Danny but with obvious mistakes. His hair was black, his eyes were a scintillating type of blue, his cheeks were flushed and he looked very much alive. 

At being addressed Danny looked over his shoulder, saw the picture the twins were looking at and his smiling demeanor dropped.   
“Oh…um, yeah.” He said awkwardly before standing and gently taking the picture from Mabel, he walked back to the window where Tucker and Sam still chatted, sitting on the sidewalk, their voices indistinguishable, nothing more than a comforting mindless murmur called forth by the memories of a ghost.   
Clearly his throat and quickly rubbing the corners of his eyes, Danny set the picture on the desk again, face down this time. 

“Here.” He said, digging into the top desk drawer and handing Dipper…a thermos?   
“Um…thanks but I’m not really a soup kind of guy.” Dipper said with a weak smile, looking down at the high tech (though be it extremely homemade) soup canister. It was coated in metal plating, and had a little light on the side. The lid looked like it had been welded shut and wouldn’t be opening anytime soon.   
“It’s not that kind of thermos.” Danny said with a laugh. “My parents invented it. It’s for catching and containing ghosts. It might work on your demon.”   
“Oh.” Dipper said in blank amazement, looking down at the thermos with new eyes. Wide, fascinated, glittering eyes. 

“Has anything ever got out of one of these things before?” Dipper asked, twisting the thermos this way and that to inspect it. Now the metal plating and the welding job didn’t seem like overkill.   
“I’ve been sucked into that thing on” A tired sigh. “MANY occasions. There’s no getting out of it. If there was a ghost that could get out of the thermos, I don’t remember them.”   
“Wait, why would your parents invent something like this if you’re a ghost?” Mabel asked confused.   
“Oh…um…” Danny scratched the back of his neck nervously. “My parents are kind of ghost hunters. One day I was fiddling with one of their experiments and I…” He trailed off, struggling to find the right words. 

“You died?” Dipper asked, horrified.   
“Sort of. I just kind of got…caught in between things. It’s hard to explain, basically I’m half dead. I’m a ghost but I can also do this-” on cue a ring of brilliant, blazing green fire wrapped around Danny, starting at his middle and deviating in two directions, one going up and the other going down, as it passed over him, his appearance instantly changed. Black and white three piece suit became plain black t-shirt and jeans, white hair became black and green eyes became blue until the boy in the photos stared contemplatively back at them, living and breathing by all matters of appearance. Dipper gasped, wide-eyed and fascinated. 

“It’s a good thing you didn’t show Ford that.” Dipper said at last, “He definitely would have been forced to dissect you.”   
Danny laughed, “Why do you think I never told my parents? They always go on and on about ripping ghosts apart, sometimes for research, sometimes for fun. And here they didn’t even notice that I was-” He paused, looking down at his pink, fleshy, living hands and his blue eyes grew sad. Dipper blinked a couple more times, trying to adjust his eyesight to this new Danny, who seemed so similar and yet so alien to the one he and Mabel had grown accustomed to. He looked over at his sister, her lips were pursed and her eyes were wide but both of them knew better than to say anything. 

“Now that they think I’m actually dead, I wonder if I should even bother going home.” Danny mumbled weakly. “I mean, I knew it would happen eventually…”   
“What?” Mabel asked softly and Danny looked up from his reverie and smiled softly.   
“Something would make me leave home. I always thought it would be due to the fact that I would age…differently but I guess faking my death works too.”   
“Age differently?” Dipper asked, “I thought you were dead? Why would you age at all?” 

“Half dead. Only half dead.” Danny said, digging into his pockets and leaning up against the wall in a completely teenager like fashion. “Vlad mentioned something to me once. Said the treatments changed him a lot, and the rest he did himself to make him look older but otherwise it slowed his aging down significantly, and since he and I-” He stopped, looking over the eagerly watching twins with a suddenly guilty expression, as though he realized he shouldn’t be telling them all of this. “N-never mind.” He straightened and there was another flash of green light and the regular white haired Danny they knew was back, with his fiery crackling green eyes ablaze. “Let’s leave. I’m sick of this place.” 

Zipping through the air again, he tied himself to the twins again and headed back towards the door. Dipper clutched at his stomach where the rope had roughly yanked him. Mabel hurriedly tucked the last edges of her skirt into Danny’s jeans as Dipper thought Danny would just as quickly yank them back into the abyss of the Ghost Zone but he paused, giving the twins a moment to catch their breath and Danny seemed to strain his ears for something. They could hear the voices murmuring from below them, laughter and a young girl’s sharp cry of outrage before it was broken down into laughter to join the others. Dipper watched his friend’s face but his expression was void and his eyes were a million miles away. 

“Ready?” He asked, turning to the twins, Dipper gulped and nodded, taking his sister’s hand. Danny opened the door again. Instead of a hallway and whatever pleasantries lay down in the kitchen, the black void of the Ghost Zone greeted them again and Danny took off into the void with the twins trailing after him. 

“Ok,” Mabel said, clearly trying to distract herself from the concerning emptiness slowly circling them, looking over his shoulder, Dipper could see Danny’s door closing itself behind them and fading from view. “So…like, are there tunes we could have or something?”   
Danny barked a small little laugh and said nothing more as if that were a reply. Her mouth pursed to the side in utter annoyance (Mabel HATED being ignored) she tried again.   
“Alright, can I see that demon eye? Maybe I can get it to work?” 

“Um…Mabel?” Dipper asked, “Can we maybe not play with the small but important circular and slippery object while we’re working our way through an endless void?”   
“I’m not going to drop it!” Mabel snapped, offended.   
“And if you do, I have a feeling where it’ll end up.” Danny said, glaring ahead of him with a look of dark irritation at the thought of some distant and unhappy memory. “Trust me when I say this Mabel, we do NOT want to end up looking for a marble in the place where lost human things end up.” 

Mabel crossed her arms and crossed her legs, so that her whole body was a tight knot of annoyance being tugged through the nothingness. “Fine, then what are we going to do for fun?”   
“Fun?” Danny asked, “Mabel, I’d really, really rather we not attract attention. Remember that thing I said about ghost’s being vicious?”   
Mabel groaned, “This is going to be a long road trip.”   
Dipper had to agree, the endless darkness was only so terrifying for so long before the thrill wore off.   
“Hey, what’s that over there?” Mabel asked suddenly, jabbing Dipper in the ribs, which, had they been in a gravity situation might have hurt, but with them still being weightless, only made Dipper drift off course a bit before floating back. 

He looked over at Mabel, who had watched her brother’s small little orbit with wicked glee.   
“Mabel, wait, wait don’t-” Dipper cut off his own sentence to sigh as he drifted off course again and like a balloon after you punch it, he came drifting back into line.   
“Stop that.” He said, as Mabel pushed him again and she giggled. “What were you pointing at?” He challenged in hopes of distracting her as he drifted back onto to get a foot square in the center of his chest again that sent him reeling to the end of his rope. 

“That.” Mabel said pointing of Dipper’s shoulder as she shoved him again. He looked. It was a ship, it looked to be about 18c. in make but Dipper, despite his shamefully acute knowledge of the old fashioned ships couldn’t sort out the model. Its three white sails were filled to bursting as it drifted through the abyss, sheeted in a green ghostly glow. Whatever it was, it seemed fit for combat, even from here, Dipper could see the canon holes on it. He could see something else on the main sail, a pair of crossbones and a skull. It seemed to wearing some sort of hat. 

“Pirates?” Dipper asked, looking over to Danny, who followed his gaze and frowned.   
“Huh. I’ve never seen those guys before. I bet they’re new.” He smirked pleasantly as he mumbled to himself. “I wonder if they have Young Blood running for his money?”   
“Who’s Young Blood?” Dipper asked, swinging wide over the abyss again thanks to Mabel.   
“Leader of the main pirate gang that lived around these parts when I was here last.” Danny answered, “more annoying than anything. I’d be glad to have a new pirate leader to negotiate with.” 

Dipper gazed at the pirate ship, no bigger than one he’d find in the bottle. If he squinted he could see little shapes moving across the deck and he felt his imagination tugging him towards it…  
Snap.   
Dipper felt it in his gut first, the loosening of the rope, he heard Mabel scream in horror and shout his name. It seemed to echo around the great chasm they were stuck in. He was moving quite fast now, like a stone set loose from a sling shot, the abyss was all around him, the sluggish air encircled him in a slight breeze. 

He was flying towards nothing, surrounded by nothing. Again, the sensation of being under water overpowered him, he kicked his legs, thrashed but there was nothing, nothing to grab at. Just an endless abyss before him and below him and around him. Endless and endless, but no…not exactly endless, not quite, there was something before him. A clouded swirl of green like a whirlpool as he caught sight of it, he could feel his trajectory changing, instead of being flung he was being pulled. 

“Oh, shit!” Dipper gasped, thrashing harder because sure, that was going to help! It didn’t, he was still moving towards it, a black vortex of greenish colour, in whose center he could see nothing but a bright point of light. His mind was blank, stricken with the overwhelming helplessness of his situation. With difficulty he twisted in midair to see Mabel and Danny, already so very far away, staring at him with wide and terrified eyes.   
“Mabel!” He shouted, reaching out for her as they grew smaller and smaller in the darkness. “Help me!” 

He could see her shaking Danny’s shoulder, snapping him out of his stunned horror. The ghost boy shot forward, his legs vanishing into a fluttering comet tail, trailing Mabel along after him. Dipper could visibly see Mabel’s weight slowing Danny down. Mabel saw it too and started to thrash, wrenching at the rope around her waist with dug fingernails. After a few feeble moments of fruitless struggling, she looked up, tears drifting from her eyelashes to float around her in tiny droplets of water as she looked at Dipper, helpless and pleading, for forgiveness, for Dipper to do something, to fix things and he was struck with the horrifying realization that he couldn’t do anything.

A shadow passed over him, he craned his neck to stare in astonishment at the barnacle ridden underbelly of a ship. It was way bigger up close, looming over him, boards creaking, ropes swinging. As he watched the ship, a form leapt over the side, an unraveling rope rippling behind him as he dove, his form sleek and organized like he was a well-trained diver. He was falling towards him like an arrow. He had no face that Dipper knew, his face was stoic and his frown was set. His eyes were like nails, driven and focused and drilling into Dipper as though he could will Dipper towards him. 

His arm was outstretched to Dipper, tears of panic and desperation were gathering at the edges of Dipper’s eyes. He didn’t know this man, didn’t question it. He was merely a hand reaching out to pull him to safety and Dipper would take it. He could almost reach him. Then the rope around the man’s waist pulled taunt. Dipper gasped as the distance between them widened.   
“No!” He shouted, despair filling him. The man’s eyes widened, staring with horrified intensity at Dipper. 

A moment’s breathe and then resolve flooded his features, he gritted his teeth and as he dug into his belt, a long sword glinted a wicked silver. With a slice he severed the rope connecting him to his ship, he fell towards Dipper, his sword snuck in between his teeth for safekeeping.   
“What are you doing?” Dipper gasped as the man reached him, grabbed him and pulled him close in a protective embrace, hunching his shoulders as if he expected to take some sort of blow as the two of them together tumbled into the swirl of light.


	2. The Crew

Mabel screamed. And kept screaming, staring at the place her brother had vanished, the green ghoulish light that had swallowed him whole was dispersing into tiny particles of green to float through the air like a green mist. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true. Her brother was gone.   
“Dipper, Dipper no!” She gasped, thrashing her legs about pointlessly, overwhelmed with the instinct that she could swim towards him, save him even though only the void stretched on before her, no brother in any direction. When she blinked she could see him still, falling, reaching out for her, terror in his eyes as he shouted her name. Oh gods, she had done that! She couldn’t have just remained bored for a few meager hours? Oh gods!

“Mabel, Mabel calm down!” Danny said, shaking her by the shoulders, he was holding her but she hardly felt it, he was close to her, his green eyes that had barely spared her a few soft hearted glances since his freedom were staring right at her, pleading with her and she didn’t even care. Because Dipper was gone.   
“We have to get him back!” She cried, “go after him, please!”   
“I can’t, the portal’s gone!” Danny said, “but don’t worry, it’s alright Mabel. Mabel, just breathe, please. We have to focus.” He looked over his shoulder to wear the pirate ship still hovered, the severed rope fluttered forsakenly over the side of the ship.

“Come on.” Danny said, taking Mabel’s hand and pulling her towards the ship. She continued to stare at the spot where her brother had vanished.   
They neared the deck and Mabel, in her numb mind could admire that it was quite the decorative ship, marvelous and just her style. On one the sail fluttered a grinning skull dressed in a wide brimmed hat and on the front of the ship a smiling goat head greeted her. It was the happiest face on the ship. Four teenagers stood at the edge of the ship where the rope had been hung. 

A girl with bright burning hair clutched the rope with white trembling knuckles as her wide eyes stared at the spot Dipper and the man had vanished, the boy beside her with a long nose and a slack jawed mouth stared right along with her in gasping horror. Only the last boy looked up, a blond haired beauty with a cigarette in his mouth and a squinting look of distain.   
“Oh look, more company.” He growled, shoving his hands roughly into his pockets to glare at Danny. 

The red haired girl let out a yelp, “What? More ghosts? Where?” She tilted her head to gaze at the two of them approaching with glowering suspicion as though she wasn’t sure whether Mabel would bite or not.   
Mabel thought she looked extremely pretty with a no nonsense crocked frown and sharp black eyes that looked like they were extremely used to getting their own way.   
“Thank you for trying to save my friend.” Danny said with solemn nod as he fluttered over the deck, elbowing Mabel in the ribs and she nodded numbly. 

“Yes, thank you.” She sniffed, horror still racking her raw. “But why…why did your man cut his rope? Now they’re both gone.”   
“Yeah,” The blond haired boy said with a tired exhaling of smoke. His blond hair tumbled haphazardly into his face, shading his one eye from view. He didn’t look all that worried for his friend, if anything he looked almost put out, when he caught Mabel’s gaze his expression softened as he gave a tired half hearted smile. “That’s Moss Head for you.”   
The last boy of the ship’s party, a boy who had not spoken or made a move to acknowledge their presents, hung near the deck’s edge with nails slowly digging grooves into the railing. Mabel had to guess he was someone of importance; he wore the same hat that was painted on the sail, a wide brimmed straw hat that shaded his eyes for the moment. 

Slowly, Danny drifted down until Mabel’s feet touched the deck and for some reason her feet stuck when they hit the wood, her stomach gave a lurch at the sudden feeling of gravity. She looked between the three teenagers that gazed upon her, probably no older than Wendy and her friends and she saw the same raw pain tearing through them that she felt for Dipper.   
“I’m-I’m sorry…about your friend.” She choked, and she didn’t even notice when she had broken into sobs until she was doubled over and shaking. Her brother was gone, the words struck her to the very core of her being and she felt so small, so lost. The blond boy looked at her for a long moment, and without a word, headed down below deck. 

“Hey, hey. It’s alright.” The red haired girl said, looking a little taken aback as she crouched down beside Mabel.   
“Yeah, don’t worry.” The long nosed boy said, hovering the pair of them, his goggles that were perched on his forehead that winked faintly in the ghostly light. “It’ll be alright. Honestly, worse stuff has happened to us.”   
Why was that the only thing anyone seemed to be able to say? Such false pretty words brought no comfort to her, in fact her insides flames with anger.   
“But…it’s not alright. How could something worse have happened to you than watching your friend vanish along with my brother? How can you all be so calm?” Mabel said, straightening in one fluid motion, not even noticing Danny’s arms, which had begun to encircle her but had pulled back as fury seeped through her teeth. Her fists were clenched and trembling, tears spilled down her face, everything was wrong, Dipper was gone and that boy by the rails hadn’t even moved. 

She wavered, her chest heaving, her voice was weak when she croaked the words. “Don’t you even care that your friend is gone?”   
The boy slowly turned his head to glare one eye at her. It was wide as the moon, two disks of blue and his pupils had been contracted into quivering pin picks. Mabel took a step back, thrown off by the intensity, the fury in that gaze. For a second it matched her own. She bumped into a figure that had appeared behind her. She turned; it was the blond boy again. He held in his hand a steaming cup of soft smelling tea. 

She blinked as he handed it to her with a quiet little bow.   
“Please sit, pretty young lady.” The boy said, “rest and drink so you might feel a little better.” She stared at him, at his warm but distant face with kind eyes that swam like the sea. She sighed and sipped the tea with a murmured thank you.   
“They aren’t dead.” Danny announced and the tea caught in Mabel’s throat. The rest of the crew’s heads snapped around. 

“What?” The boy at the rails spoke at last, softly, low and dangerous. Danny, also unnerved by the boy’s sheer intensity, took a step back.   
“That thing that swallowed Dipper and your man was a portal. It took them somewhere.”   
“Where?” The boy’s words were quiet like venom. He was turned towards them now, his face was weather worn and brown as though it had lived under the open sky all its life. His hair was black and mangy; he had under his eye one long jagged scar. 

“I don’t know. It could have taken them somewhere else in the Ghost Zone or out of this dimension entirely.”   
“Ghost Zone? Is that what this freaky place is called?” The girl said with a half-hearted laugh as she came to stand by the long nosed boy. “Guess your name of Demon-Nightmare-Disaster Island won’t catch on after all, Usopp.”   
“How do we find them?” The straw-hat boy pressed, taking a step closer to Danny, Danny took another step back. 

“There was a map in the Realm of the Far Frozen but it was stolen and-”   
“We’ll get it back then.” The boy growled, “we’ll search everywhere, this whole cursed place until-”  
“Wait, the eye!” Mabel gasped, and Danny turned to her with an expression that told her to keep her mouth shut. The boy blinked once, twice.   
“Eye?” He asked and Mabel and Danny exchanged a worried glance.   
“What eye?” The boy pressed, taking another step towards them. 

“My uncle gave it to us. It’s supposed to help us navigate the dimensions…it’s…it’s like a map, isn’t it Danny?”   
“Ugh…well, I don’t know, we don’t know how it works and-”   
“Give it to me.” The boy pressed, holding open his palm and Danny stepped back until he was up against the rail of the ship, clutching the pouch around his neck.   
“No way, man. It’s how I’m planning on finding MY friends.”   
“Danny!” Mabel gasped, horrified and Danny’s eyebrows pinched together in agony at her obvious disgust with him. 

“Mabel, come on. What does the skull and crossbones mean? They’re pirates and pirates steal stuff. If we give them the eye, they might just take it and then we won’t be able to find anyone: not Dipper, not Sam or Tucker, not Bill and not your city…no offense.” Danny said with a hurried half-cocked smile back at the boy.   
“Understandable.” The girl said with a careless laugh, folding her arms across her chest. “Look, did it occur to you that we want our man back just as much as you want yours? So why don’t we work together and that way we’ll be able to save them both.” She looked over to the boy, her eyes wordlessly voicing something that Mabel couldn’t understand but the boy nodded to her regardless.   
“Wait, we’re going to use a magical eye to navigate?” The boy with the long nose and the worried eyes gasped. “OK, let me just say that does NOT sound like a good idea.” 

The shoulders of the boy with the straw hat loosened a little bit as he smiled at the boy with a cocky half grin.  
“I’m with Nami, Ussop. Nami’s usually right anyways.” He turned to Mabel and Danny and stared at them with a look that wasn’t quite happy or sad, just intense. “I’m Monkey D. Luffy, I’m the captain. This is Usopp my fix-it guy, Nami my navigator, Sanji my cook and Zoro-” He paused, a little twitch from his scarred eye as he quickly corrected himself. “Zoro is my best swordsman but he’s not here right now. He’s with your brother, so you shouldn’t have to worry about your brother’s safety.” He was now mostly addressing his crew. “Because Zoro’s super tough and super brave. That’s why he cut his own rope, because he thought that no matter what was in that hole, he could protect your brother from it. So we’re going to find him and your brother, you got it?” Luffy said, turning to Mabel now, his eyes glittering with brimstone, gritty determination and smiling with a grin that consumed most of his face.

It was a contagious smile, a contagious look in his eye and Mabel felt her heart lift despite herself. She nodded, sipping a little bit more of Sanji’s tea and feeling a little bit better. “In the meantime, welcome aboard.” He said, coming up to Mabel and shaking her hand.   
“Thanks. I’m Mabel.” Mabel said weakly, Luffy grinned.   
“Neat name, who’s your floaty friend?”  
“Danny Phantom.” Danny said, crossing his arms with a scowl. Usopp snorted into his hands.   
“Phantom? I didn’t think ghosts named themselves so…literally. Is there a ghost named Mr. Boo?” 

Danny narrowed his eyes until they glowed bright green and Usopp yelped and ducked behind Sanji whose narrowed gaze, though it didn’t glow, was equally as savage.   
“Nice try. We’ve been stuck in this place too long for us to be scared by some glowing eyes.” Sanji said with a smirk.   
“Yeah.” Usopp said weakly, still standing behind Sanji.   
“Yeah.” Nami echoed weakly, throwing a glance over the endless abyss where the darkness lurked.   
“OK guys, new plan!” Luffy announced, placing his hands on his hips and grinning like a demon. “Find Zoro and the dude with the cool hat that I really want!” 

“You mean Dipper?” Mabel asked with a confused look, Luffy turned to her and smiled.   
“Oh is that his name? Cool. Later on when we save him though, can I try on his hat?”   
“Um…sure?” Mabel said with uncertainty, thinking the statement beyond weird. “Wait…is that…is that why you guys decided to rescue my brother? Because you liked his hat?”   
Luffy blinked at her, blanked faced as though her question was hardly a question at all.   
“No, no, no.” Nami put in hastily. “That would be a dumb reason, wouldn’t it Luffy?” She snarled with narrowed eyed purpose at her captain, who taking her cue had starting nodding. “No, no, we tried to rescue your brother because we thought you guys might know a way out of this place.” Nami said, smiling brightly, as though this were a better answer. Mabel blinked.

“Wait…so you’re saying that if you didn’t think my brother and I could lead you out of here, you would have left my brother to fall into a swirling black hole?” She gasped. Usopp and Nami exchanged a look that seemed to ask which one of them was going to tell her something.   
“Kid…we’re pirates.” Ussop said at last, carelessly scratching his cheek. “We’re not exactly known for our selflessness.”   
“So do you guys know the way out of here or not?” Nami asked, folding her arms across her chest. “Because we have been stuck here a LONG time. By the way, drink that tea nice and slowly because the ghost whose lair we robbed that from will probably not be happy to see us again.”

Sanji’s smiled sadly at Nami, “Don’t worry Nami, we’ll manage. You can have my water tomorrow if you’d like.” He said before turning to Mabel.   
“I’d offer you a proper meal but we only have enough food left for about a couple more days.” He said and the despair and helplessness in his voice was real as he turned away and started to help Usopp adjust the sails to change their course.   
“So can I see that eye thing yet?” Luffy asked, perching himself up on the rail of the ship to gaze at Mabel and Danny lazily.   
“Not while you’re leaning over the abyss, you idiot.” Nami snarled, “knowing you, you’ll drop it and then we’ll all be screwed.” 

Mabel’s eyes widened as she looked between Nami and her captain, who seemed to care little about being insulted by his navigator, he merely shrugged and leaned his head back to stare into the infinite night that surrounded them.   
“I…I thought Luffy was the captain.” Mabel asked weakly and Nami’s harsh expression dropped into one of confusion as she blinked at Mabel.   
“Yeah, of course. What makes you say that?”  
Mabel blinked and then finally shrugged. “Ugh…no reason…”   
Man, what a strange crew. 

“So can I see it then?” Nami said, holding out her hand. “The eye thing?”   
At Danny hesitation, she rolled her eyes. “Oh relax. Where am I going to steal it to? The other end of the ship? There’s nowhere I can take it.”   
Danny looked over at Mabel, his green eyes quickly begging for permission to tell her no but Mabel flashed him a hard glance and Danny relented and with a sigh he drew from Ford’s dice bag the marble eye and handed it to Nami.   
“Huh, weird.” Nami said, holding the eye up to examine it. Though Mabel had to assume this was purely out of habit, for unlike home, there was no bright celestial body here to make things any less dark than they already are. “So you don’t know what to do with it?” 

“Not a clue.” Mabel said, honestly. “When you hold it while you dream it shows you visions of other worlds. That’s all I’ve got from that.”   
“Other worlds?” Luffy asked, his eyes shining. “What kind of other worlds?”   
Mabel blinked and tried to force a smile. It was difficult with Dipper not around, difficult when all she could see whenever she closed her eyes was him fall and screaming her name. But she could tell she was slowly starting to like Luffy, very slowly.   
“Um…just, like stuff.” She said, and Luffy kept on looking at her like he was expecting more. So with a sigh, she started describing the city of her dreams to Luffy, with the lapis lazuli cobblestones and floating buildings and by the time she was finished both Nami and Luffy were practically drooling.   
“We are SO GOING THERE!” 

“Pure, dark lapis lazuli goes for a pretty berry back home.” Nami said with a wide and wicked grin to match her captain’s. “If it’s in the cobblestones I bet they won’t mind if we ‘relieved’ a few from them.”   
“You’re awful.” Danny chided but Nami only laughed.   
“Fair enough. Now let’s see if I can get this little guy to talk?” She said, smirking coyly as she held the eye between her two fingers.   
“Doesn’t really look like an eye to me.” Luffy noted.   
“It’s a demon eye.” Danny snapped, clearly more than a little annoyed with the captain as Nami motioned the two of them to follow her below deck. 

“Cooool.” Luffy said with a grin, walking alongside Mabel, who felt encouraged enough to tell him that she and her brother had managed to ripe out the demon’s eye once before. At the mention of her brother, her face fell and Luffy’s suntanned faced was pinched with sympathy.   
“How’d you manage that?” He asked kindly, touching the edge of his elbow to hers and Mabel smiled weakly.   
“We turned out house into a monster robot. One arm was made out of a dinosaur.” 

Luffy’s eyes grew so wide they might burst from his skull. “Tell me.” He insisted, awestruck. He placed a hand on her shoulder, his eyes shinning. “Tell me more.”   
Mabel actually laughed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Danny’s eyes narrow into green glowing slits like bits of poisonous malachite. 

They went below deck where the dim lighting illuminated a large room that seemed to be some sort of lounge. A comfy looking couch squatted in the corner, a bar where empty wine bottles rattled faintly, a bookshelf stood in the corner piled high with books that seemed to bulge out of their shelves.   
“Not a good place to read.” Mabel noted. 

“It’s usually lighter.” Nami grumbled, as she started fumbling around the coffee table mumbling about a lamp before Danny’s green light flickering around his hand to throw an eerie shifting light over the place.   
“Oh sweet.” Luffy gasped, grinning as he reached out to touch Danny’s flames. Annoyed, Danny slapped the boy’s hand away and Luffy let out a little yelp before shaking his hand out and reaching for the flame again. “I’ve seen ghosts do that here, usually though it’s when they’re throwing fire at us!” He laughed and Danny stared at him in bewilderment. 

“You’re a really weird kid, you know that right?” Danny asked, kicking off the ground to hover in the air out of Luffy’s reach. The boy cocked a smug little half smile before his arm shot out like an elastic band, stretching and kept stretching until it coiled around the rafters like a snake and he hoisted himself up into the air so that he was eyelevel with Danny.   
“Sure, what’s your point?” Luffy asked and Danny screamed in alarm, actually tripping himself out of the air, so that he fell to the ground it with a flickering of his green flame. 

“Stop messing with my light, Luffy!” Nami snapped, throwing Mabel a slightly annoyed look before Mabel realized she was clinging to the older girl’s arm with white curled fingers. She gave a weak little smile and let go as Luffy’s arm snapped back to its regular place as he dropped to the ground.   
“Can…all of you do that?” Mabel asked weakly, her stomach suddenly felt rather queasy and she wished that she had maybe drunk that tea a little slower. 

“What? Oh, no. Just him.” Nami said and Mabel sighed with assurance as Nami flashed Mabel a raised eyebrow in confusion. “Do you not have devilfruit users where you’re from?”  
Mabel shook her head.   
“Bummer.” Luffy called from where he had stretched his arms again like wobbly spaghetti noodles to try and grab Danny, whose back was pressed against the ceiling as he hissed at Luffy with that little ghostly sound he used to scare away the business woman. “They can be pretty cool sometimes.” 

“Like how?” Mabel asked, intrigued. Luffy retracted his arms to their usual length and smiled at Mabel. “Oh well, there was this clown we had to fight, he was really annoying but he could disassemble his body parts. And I’m a rubber man.” Luffy grinned as though their topic was as trivial as the weather. Mabel stared at him.   
“So…if I ate a devilfruit could I turn into a mermaid or something?”   
“Mermaid?” Luffy asked confused. “We’ve got plenty of those where we’re from. Not that it’ll do you much good to know that if you’re a devilfruit user. You won’t be able to swim.”   
“Huh, alright. Weird rules.” Mabel said and Luffy shrugged,   
“Hey, I didn’t make them up.” 

“Could have fooled me.” Danny grumbled, drifting down from the ceiling, the little light fluttering like a startled bird in his hand.   
“ANYWAY.” Nami said, setting the marble eye on the coffee table. “Task at hand, shall we?”   
“Oh right.” Mabel said, and they all leaned in around the table to stare at the little eye were it sat lifeless, rolling on the wooden surface. It sat and they stared but it did little else.   
“So like…how do you get it to show us where Zoro is?” Luffy asked after a moment’s pause.

“I’m working on that.” Nami said through gritted teeth staring in concentration at the eye with screwed up gaze and slightly rosy cheeks from the mental strain. Mabel, with a shrug, reached out and spun the eye around like a top. It spun until it slowed and then it lay still.   
“Maybe it needs to be soaked in water or something.” Danny asked, “My parents always had flash frozen apocalypse food and you always had to put it in water to eat it.”   
“You said this is a demon eye?” Nami said and Mabel nodded.   
“It was given to my uncle for his machine.” Mabel replied. 

“So swallowing it is out of the question.” Luffy said sagely and Danny squinted at him with confusion as though he were still trying to figure out how he’d managed to get stuck with this guy.   
“I take it your uncle didn’t happen to figure out how to make it work?” Nami asked. Mabel shook her head.   
“What’s worse, the demon might have been tricking my uncle.” Mabel said.   
“Well what did the demon say it would do?” Nami asked.   
“He said it would help my uncle navigate through dimensions. I can’t think of a way Bill would twist that. He doesn’t usually flat out lie in his deals. Just…bends the truth a little bit.” Mabel said, thinking of the deal she had unknowingly made with Bill and what she had gotten for it. Endless blissful days of summer, a lie and a lull to keep her trapped there forever. She shuddered. 

“Navigate…” Nami murmured. “Navigate…”   
Her eye drifted to her bracelet, which held a large compass suspended in an orb. She straightened.   
“Luffy, fetch a cup of water from the storage containers.”   
Luffy blinked at her, “But I thought only Sanji was allowed to touch the rations?”   
“Good point. Get Sanji to get a cup of water.”   
“Allow me.” Danny said, his eyes shot with a crackling blue like that jump to life in his one hand as his green flames leaped higher with the other. Carefully he held the two together over a shot glass that was left lying at the bar. He handed the glass to Nami, who stared at the melted snow with perplexity. 

“Is this…good to drink?” She asked cautiously and Danny nodded.   
“From what I know of it, it’s just snow.”   
Nami gulped the glass in one go and held it out for more. Smirking, Danny obliged, Nami took a small little sip before handing it off to Luffy who gulped happily before Danny refilled the cup for a third time.   
“Oh, we should get Ussop and Sanji, they’ll want water too!” Luffy cried but Nami stopped him,   
“Just wait, let’s see what this does first.” Nami murmured as she dropped the eye into the glass with a sturdy plop. It bobbed at the surface, wobbling to and fro while Nami held it before it settled, the pupil of the eye steadily staring off to the left. Nami stood and carefully, oh so carefully begun to turn, still holding the cup as a grin slowly spread across her face. Despite the fact that Nami turned, the eye stayed fixed on a single point. 

“Well isn’t that something.” Nami said with satisfaction, walking this way and that throughout the room, watching the eye swivel with her. “It seems it’s not so blind after all.”   
“Oh, cool. Let me see!” Luffy cried, taking the cup from her and the eye wobbled a moment before spinning around to face a new direction.   
“Nice going, you broke it.” Nami growled, annoyed.   
“No, I didn’t.” Luffy snapped as Danny looked over the boy’s shoulder.   
“Hey Nami.” Danny asked, “Just out of curiosity. Point in the direction of the storage containers where the food is, will you?” Nami pointed and Danny smiled, looking back to the eye to confirm his suspicions. 

“It seems it’ll point according to the wants of its bearer.” Danny noted and Nami glared at Luffy.   
“Couldn’t stop thinking about your stomach for more than a moment, could you?” Nami said, snatching the cup back again. Luffy grinned guiltily.   
“Alright, so I just have to hold the cup and it’ll point me to where Dipper is?” Mabel asked cautiously.   
“As long as you’re not hungry.” Nami noted with an irritated side-glance towards Luffy. Mabel gave a funny half smile.   
“Trust me, I’m not thinking about food at the moment. All I want is Dipper back.” 

“Alright, try to keep that in mind.” Nami said, placing the little shot glass into Mabel’s hand. It spun for a moment, then settled on a fixed point.   
“You sure about this?” Mabel asked with one quirked eyebrow.   
“No.” Nami said, “But what other choice do we have?”   
“So let’s all trust the floating demon eye in a shot glass.” Danny sighed.   
Mabel nodded, determination knotting her gut, willing the eye to point to her brother, willing it to work and not thinking about what would happen if it didn’t.


	3. The Muse of Nightmares

Dipper saw his sister fade from view and he felt his heart threaten to give out. For a moment he hung suspended in crackling green and then he was falling, the surge of gravity hit him like a punch to the stomach as he suddenly landed with painful protest from his body onto a glossy smooth stone floor. They slide like they were on ice and would have crashed into the wall if the man’s shoulder hadn’t been there to take the brunt of the blow. Then for a moment they simply lay there, breathing and contemplating the fact that they were alive. The man straightened, pulling himself away from Dipper until he hung over him. 

“You OK?” The man asked, his three dangly earing brushing his cheek lightly as he gazed down at Dipper with those hard, focused eyes. Dipper blinked.   
“Y-yeah…thanks.” He croaked, cursing his voice for cracking NOW of all times. The man untangled himself from Dipper, crouching as he surveyed their new surroundings, his hand placed protectively on one of his three swords. Dipper sat up, feeling rather battered despite the man’s best efforts but his pain was forgotten when he saw where they were. 

It looked to be the hallway of some great palace but none like Dipper had ever seen before (not that he had seen that many). The floor was glossy black obsidian, displaying a wobbly blue-tinged version of an up-side-down Dipper sitting in an up-side-down room. As he gazed worriedly into his own reflection, his reflection decided to rebel and smile back at him, with teeth that glinted deadly and sharp. Dipper gasped and got hurriedly to his feet, making a point not to check whether or not the reflection followed him. The walls were a stripped pattern of red and black, reminding Dipper dimly of a circus he’d much rather forget. Swirls of artfully painted thorny vines curled and curled themselves over the walls as if they were trying to choke the life out of the very stones. Thick curtains of velvet black hung from a tall window. 

A vase filled with gnarled twisted branches stood in the corner that for some reason made Dipper uneasy. He decided he didn’t like it here.   
The man slowly stood and quietly made his way over to the wall beside the tall window, pressing his back against it as he slowly inched his gaze round the corner, like Dipper had seen done in the movies before. Dipper blinked at the man, slightly amused but mostly developing a sense of awe.   
“Great.” The man cursed under his breath. 

“What?” Dipper asked, walking up to the glass to peer out disregarding the man’s annoyed little frown. Their window was buried in a high wall of a many towered castle, the castle seemed to be trying for gothic for it was incredibly spiky, towers sharpened to a wicked point, the decorations that curled the stone sides were jagged and unpleasant to look at. Then of course there were the grinning, leering, leaning gargoyles, who’s stone wings were outstretched, whose claws rung gouged into their stone perches, who glazed and stony stare glinted with hunger. 

They decorated the castle haphazardly but frequently, occupying window ledge and eaves, tower peak and pedestal, like the flock had settled here and forgotten how to take off again. Dipper repeated his thoughts in that he didn’t like it here. The whole castle was surrounded by a spiky and threatening looking gate that didn’t scream hospitality, if anything it just seemed to scream. And beyond that…was harder to make out. There was a lot of fire in that direction, red and greedy, flowing through the landscape like a river and other things that wormed and crawled inside the rivers and cesspools of red burning flames, after a chilling moment, Dipper realized that they were hands, heads, entangled body parts, flaming and writhing in a constant state of agony. 

“We’re in hell!” Dipper exclaimed, aghast before the man hissed at him for silence.   
“Be quiet! Unless you want to join them!” The man growled, shoving a thumb out the window. Dipper gulped and quickly shook his head, looking about the empty hallway with a new sense of dread. A glance over the horrific landscape a second time made Dipper pause. The sky above was still black with green swirls like spiraling galaxies.   
“We’re still in the Ghost Zone.” Dipper hissed, a note of relief loosening the panic that winding itself around his chest like one of the vines from the walls. It meant that he was still in the same plain of existence as his friends, and he could find a small comfort in that. 

“The what?” The man asked, using his thumb to loosen his one sword from its sheath.  
“The place where we were before. We must have just gotten chucked to a…a really bad part of the neighborhood.” Dipper said weakly before he noticed that the man wasn’t by his side anymore, he was up a few paced ahead and with a little yelp of panic, Dipper trotted after him. The man stopped short at a turn in the corridor and Dipper bumped into him. The man’s head snapped around with a glare at Dipper that would have only been completed by a snort of flames being issues from his flared nostrils. 

“Sorry.” Dipper said with a weak smile. The man gave an irritated sigh, rolled his eyes and turned away again.   
“I’m Dipper Pines, by the way.” Dipper said, regretting his introduction as soon as it had begun. “I mean, well like, my name isn’t Dipper, it’s just what people call me. I mean, it’s a dumb nickname but you know, we don’t really pick our nicknames so um…what’s-what’s yours? Um, name I mean, not like your nickname…unless you have one and then-”  
“Stop talking.” The man snapped, throwing a narrowed glance at Dipper.

“Oh, oh right, yeah, sorry. I just…I’ll, I’ll stop.” Dipper said a half-baked smile. The man stared at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable before he turned away again. He started to move ahead and Dipper wavered.   
“Roronoa Zoro.” He said after a moment’s pause, “Are you coming?”   
Dipper sighed in relief and followed after him.   
They crept along the halls in silence. Well, Roronoa Zoro mostly moved in silence, Dipper merely tried to imitate him and mostly failed. He kept looking at the floor, where his reflection continued to wave and grin and hold a finger to his glinting teeth for silence. Its eyes were black demon pits. 

He looked at Roronoa Zoro and the three swords that hung on his belt. With his backpack full of things he suddenly felt woefully unprepared.   
“Um…hey, Roronoa Zoro?” Dipper whispered. “I don’t…um…I don’t have a weapon so maybe, could I have one of yours?” He said, starting to reach for the one sword bound in a white sheath. Roronoa Zoro’s head snapped around and he glared at Dipper with pupils that were dilated into pin needles of anger. Dipper quickly retracted his hand like he’d been bitten. He stared at the man, sensing that he had crossed some sort of line and the man, quietly infuriated, stared back.   
“No.” He answered at last and Dipper nodded weakly just as a pair of doors of to their right suddenly burst open with a bang and a clank that made the pair of them jump and whirl around. A peal of laughter rattled through the halls the sigh the wailing wind.   
“Well, what’s this?” Said a laughing female voice. “Visitors?”

A force that felt hooked to Dipper’s navel yanked him forward, he tried to dig his heels but the floor was slick like ice as both he and Roronoa Zoro were pulled into the room. As they entered, something seemed to trip them both and they fell to their knees before a towering throne. It was seated in a great hall filled with blood red banners that rippled and fluttered in the darkened rafters. They were patterned in all sorts of different colours, stripped, zigzags, splotched and plaited, welcoming him with a waving dance. A banquet table stood off to the side, piled with a ridiculous amount of gleaming food; plates of fruits, platters and platters of steaming meat, mountains of sweets and toppling towers of rich and creamy pastas. 

To the other side stood a wide window, overlooking the sea of agony in all its flaming, hideous glory. And perched on the throne was…a girl. She couldn’t have been barely older than Dipper, and definitely younger than Roronoa Zoro, with a petite little frame like a bird, Dipper could imagine she’d been made out of glass, with bones no stronger than toothpicks and fingers delicate and narrow like needles. Her skin was ghastly pale like death and the hair that spilled down her back like a waterfall was black like a raven’s feather. Her eyes and lips were the same shade of candy apple red and she studied them with a vicious kind of delight.

She wore a gown that only fell to her knees, black and tattered like a rejected Victorian dress with a tight corset laced up her torso that seemed like it would prove difficult to breathe with. Her pale legs, which were slung over the one arm of the chair were dressed in stalking and wickedly high and complicatedly laced heels that ended in a wicked point. By her side was a bowl of pomegranate seeds that stained her fingers a dark purple.   
“How delightful.” She purred with a little laugh like a bird’s, when she smiled she bore a pair of sharp little fangs.  
Dipper stared at her for a moment before gulping and respectfully inclining his head. 

“We’re sorry to intrude…um….ma’am.” He said, he wasn’t sure what to call her. “We mean no disrespect, we were brought here by mistake and by no will of our own, please let us leave.”   
Roronoa Zoro, whose eyes had grown wide but had done very little else to display his emotions, looked over at Dipper with a look that betrayed a mixture of disguise and mild admiration.   
“Leave?” The girl said, tilting her head to the side like a puppy when it witnesses strange human behavior. She slide her legs off the arm of her throne and sat up to study them better, popping a bright red seed in between her sharpened teeth. “Why should I let you do that?” She snapped her fingers and a boy appeared. 

He seemed to melt from the woodwork, or if he had been there before Dipper was ashamed to admit he hadn’t noticed him. He was a pretty thing, with thick dark hair and bright green eyes. His face was pale and expressionless like a stone mask, he wore a charming suit and kit white gloves and he moved forward with a hurried step and hunched shoulders as the girl’s eyes followed him. He stepped forward and offered her a chalice of a dark red substance that seemed too thick to be wine. Dipper shuddered as she sipped from the cup politely and pulled the draft away with a pink smear on the top of her lips that she greedily licked away.

“You just got here. Perhaps we shall have some fun together first, yes?” She clapped her hands and the force that had pulled them into the room pulled them up again, dangling them about an inch off the ground, their arm hung out to the side as though they were expecting crucifixion to be their fate sometime soon. Dipper tried to move his limbs and found in a panic that he was unable to do so. Panic rose in the back of his throat like bile, a sheen of sweat glistened on his brow. He couldn’t move, he was helpless. Again.   
“Hey, let us go!” Dipper cried, the girl only laughed and began waving her hands through the air like she was conducting an orchestra. Dipper watched, horrified, as he and Roronoa Zoro began to dance, a jerky, weird and ghastly dance, their limbs roughly pulled this way and that in the air, despite the protest of his muscles against it. Roronoa Zoro’s jaw was clenched, his eyes were wide, there was a vein standing up in his forehead as his face turned an interesting shade of purple. 

“Oh, brave little swordsman, think you can stand against me?” The girl cooed. “I’m the Muse of Nightmares, didn’t anyone tell you? And you’re in my playground now.” She laughed as Roronoa Zoro’s arm was jerked across his torso, his hand closed around one of his swords and wrenched viciously back again, the swords’ gleaming naked blade flashing in the light.   
“Oh, and what is this?” The girl smiled. “Such a shiny little toy. So sharp, so pretty. Didn’t your mama every tell you that you could cut yourself on something so sharp?”   
The sword leveled itself towards Dipper and both Dipper and Roronoa Zoro paled. 

“Or that you might hurt others?” The girl laughed and Dipper started to fly towards the blade.   
Dipper screamed, “WAIT!”   
And surprise against all surprise, he stopped. His body hung suspended over the quivering sword, the sweat standing on Roronoa Zoro’s brow, red spots dancing before Dipper’s eyes.   
“Yes?” The Muse of Nightmares asked sweetly. “Did you have something you’d like to say?”   
“I…I…” Dipper gasped, the wicked point of the blade was about a few inches away from his chest.   
“Nothing then?” She asked and she raised her hand to snap her fingers. 

“No, no, wait, wait, yes I have something to say. I-we-we can help you!” Dipper gasped, Roronoa’s eyes widened and he slightly shook his head.   
“Help?” The girl laughed. “What can you help me with?”   
“Anything, anything you’d like! Just name it!” Dipper cried and now Roronoa was viciously shaking his head.   
“Oh, that’s so funny you should say that. Because I have just a task I was needing some assistance in.” Dipper’s body began to draw away from the sword and Dipper almost began to laugh, giddy with relief.   
“Yeah, just name it and we’ll do it!” He gasped.   
“Stop saying ‘we’!” Roronoa hissed viciously, “Don’t lump me in with this!”

“What? You’d like to keep playing, my little swordsman?” The Muse of Nightmares grinned wickedly and Roronoa opened his mouth but hesitated.   
“I don’t make deals with demons.” Roronoa snapped harshly, he gulped, his blade still quivered in his hand. He threw a glaring side-glance at Dipper. “Unlike some people, right Pines?”   
Dipper pursed his lips to the side, wishing he could convey the fact that he wasn’t that stupid, one only needed to be tricked by a demon once to learn their lesson. But Roronoa had turned away and was frowning at the Muse of Nightmares, who smirked.   
“Oh you don’t do you, that’s so cute.” She giggled and snapped her fingers. Pain, unspeakable and uncontainable white fire shot through Dipper’s body, he threw back his head, arched his back as far as it would go like he was trying to touch the back of his head to his heels and screamed like he had never screamed in his life. It felt like he was nothing but the pain, it was a living thing that ran through his mind and made his limbs shake and bend to odd angles like the toys whose limbs are thoughtlessly twisted this way and that by their children and it didn’t matter because they were made from plastic. Dipper was not. He hung suspended in the air, screaming and writhing in pain, beyond the sound of his own scream he could hear Roronoa’s voice. 

“Stop it! OK, I get it just stop it!” He was furious.   
“What was that?” The Muse laughed, “it sounded like you were agreeing to my demands but I wasn’t quite sure.”   
“Fine, yes, just stop!”   
And just like that, as quickly as it had come, a small little snap of a pair of purple stained fingers and the pain was gone, the pair of them dropped to the floor, their body’s at their own disposal again. Dipper lay there, trembling, weak and breathless as he felt Roronoa looming over him.   
“Pines, get up.” He whispered, Dipper didn’t move, his limbs wouldn’t stop trembling; his mind struggled to right itself. 

“I said get up. It’ll hurt more the longer you lie there.” Roronoa snapped, grabbing Dipper’s hand and forcing him to his feet. Dipper’s legs buckled and he leaned against Roronoa for support. He felt the man’s hand at his elbow, hoisting him up. He tilted his head back and saw that the swordsman was glaring at the Muse of Nightmares with that gritted teeth intensity. If looks could kill, flames would have engulfed the Muse of Nightmares. It was an expression that more than just hatred, more than just anger, it was a promise, it was revenge and Dipper was suddenly oh so glad that Roronoa was on his side…sort of. 

The Muse of Nightmares didn’t seem bothered by the hatred in Roronoa’s eyes, in fact if anything; it curled a smirk in the corner of her ruby lips.   
“So what do you want?” Roronoa said, slowly, carefully.   
“I need you to bring me someone. A servant who has run away from me.” She said, she snapped her fingers and the serving boy appeared again, his downcast eyes and politely folded hands giving him the air of a doll as he stepped forward to stand at his mistress’s side.   
“You have a servant.” Roronoa noted. 

“Servants,” The girl corrected, “I have many but I liked her, you see. She was so pretty; she had hair that was bright golden like summer wheat and eyes like a pair of two lost pieces from the afternoon sky. I liked looking at her and now she’s gone. So bring her back.” The Muse of Nightmares said simply, as if that could simply be done at the snap of their fingers.   
Roronoa narrowed his eyes at the demon, sizing up her glittering smile and her hungry eyes.   
“What-what will you do with her?” Dipper choked out the words, his voice raspy and raw from screaming. He swallowed and it hurt but when he spoke again his voice didn’t crack. “What are you going to do with her?” 

“Questions, questions, questions.” The Muse of Nightmares said with a bored little sigh, popping a pomegranate seed into her mouth with an audible crunch. “I’m not asking you a lot, boys. Just to merely bring to me what’s mine.” Dipper cast a glance at Roronoa, whose steely eyes were narrowed, focused. He could practically hear the gears turning behind those eyes.   
“Alright then…” Roronoa asked carefully, his eyes narrowed as though not trusting the Muse’s words as genuine. 

 

“And as a little incentivize to bring you back.” The Muse continued, “How about a little deal? If you don’t come back in...” she drummed her finger on her pointed little chin before holding up four delicate fingers. “Four days. I shall just have to lose my temper.”   
Behind her, the servant, once a living stone that Dipper kept on forgetting about, suddenly came to life. His head snapped up, his face paled and he stared at Dipper and Roronoa with wide, pleading, desperate eyes. 

“I’ll take it out on my servants like the cruel little mistress I am.” She said, reaching around behind her to take the hand of the servant. She intertwined her fingers with his and with her free hand gently began to stroke his thumb. Then, she paused, considered the hand held limply in her own with a contemplative smile, then drew back her lips, baring her white fangs before sinking them into the boy’s hand. The boy’s eyed widened but he didn’t cry out, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down but he didn’t move. His free hand remained slack by his side as with a sickening snap the thumb was wrenched free from his hand, ruby blood staining his kit gloves and spilling onto the floor. 

The girl gave a few heavy crunches that made the hairs on Dipper’s neck stand on end before she swallowed and dapped the blood from her lips with a napkin provided by the shaking good hand of the boy. She dismissed him with a wave and he stepped back, quietly clutching at his bleeding hands, tears running down his cheeks as he hastened back to his place by the wall, tucked away in the shadows.   
“Either way.” The girl went on as though nothing had happened. “I get a meal. Now, do we have a deal?” 

“What the hell was that for!?!” Roronoa screamed, his face twisted into a look of disgust and horror. He placed a hand on his sword. “We’d already agreed to get you your damn girl, why would you just…do that! What’s wrong with you?”   
The Muse only laughed, her teeth stained pink with the boy’s blood until her laughter was eased down into a smile.   
“So that you know I mean what I say. Deal?” 

A deafening silence met them, interrupted only by the occasional drip-drop of blood seeping from in between the servant boy’s tightly clenched hands. Dipper looked between the demon and Roronoa, wishing he could tell what the man was thinking but his face was a better masks than the boy’s until at last he nodded.   
“Deal. We’ll find the girl and you don’t hurt the rest of your staff. On my honor.” 

His eyes were the same leveled degree of focus, hard like nails and as if expecting at any moment to suddenly be gifted with lazar vision so that he might burn the enemy before him to a crisp. “I promise.”   
There was a moment’s pause, in which the girl slowly nodded, satisfied.   
“Now,” Roronoa said, his voice changing into the tone of a businessman. “Where did you last see her? Do you have any idea where she might have gone? And also, the kid and I can’t fly so you’ll need to give us something to take us from island to island in this place.” 

“My servants tell me she slipped through that little doorway there.” The Muse of Nightmares said, pointing behind the table buckling with a king’s feast. Another servant stepped forward, also appearing from the woodwork, this one being a girl with bright blue hair and strange pointed ears, and drew back a thick black curtain to reveal a door like the ones Dipper had seen floating elsewhere in the Ghost Zone. This one was of a magnificent make, a decorative pattern carved into the dark red wood. It had no door handle, just a rope latch, in the wake of all its magnificence. 

“It leads to a particularly large…island? As you called it. She’s probably still there, since she too, cannot fly. Therefore you won’t need something to help you fly, just the ability to find the way back to the door. Think you can manage that?” She said with a coy little smile and Roronoa nodded sagely.   
“Fair enough. Then we’ll leave.” Taking Dipper by the wrist, he started to haul him towards the door.  
“I’ll wish you luck then, travellers.” The Muse of Nightmares laughed sweetly, waving a dainty little hand from her throne. 

The two servants that Dipper could see, watched the go, with empty eyes filled with longing, eyes that screamed ‘take us with you, don’t leave us here!’, eyes devoid of any hope that Dipper and Roronoa would be back, that there grisly fate was anything other than sealed.   
Roronoa threw a glance over his shoulder at the Muse of Nightmares, a narrowed eyed glare before he opened the dark red door, it creaked and moaned like the boards of an old house. Only a gaping mouth of darkness greeted them. Roronoa looked down at Dipper for a moment, his eyes cool and reserved before he stepped calmly into the blackness, pulling Dipper along after him.


	4. The Hangmen's Song

If I keep moving she won’t find it, if I keep moving IT won’t find me. If I just keep moving...just keep moving. But I’m so tired…so tired. 

 

A clear robin egg blue sky framed by burning yellow foliage and the song of singing birds met Dipper’s senses, he blinked and kept blinking, looking this way and that, waiting for something terrible to happen. But before him was a picturesque forest that seemed to carry on forever, a lovely wood that shuddered quietly in the crisp autumn breeze, somewhere a river babbled and complained against the twinkling stones, Dipper thought he heard a turkey cry somewhere far off. They were standing on a well-trodden road, made of dirt but stamped down smooth, illuminated by streams of filtered golden light. He turned to Roronoa who was squinting at the scenery before him with confusion. 

“Where…are we?” he asked, Dipper opened his mouth to reply but was forced to pause.   
“I think we’re still in the Ghost Zone.” Dipper replied and in answer to that, Roronoa pointed to the clear blue sky.   
“Last time you said that it was because the sky was weird. The sky looks fine to me.”   
“Well, the Muse of Nightmares said the girl had escaped to a shelf in the Ghost Zone or well…she called it a shelf, she didn’t say, well…I…”

“Do you know or not?” Roronoa asked with a slight air of amusement, then when Dipper didn’t answer, Roronoa sighed, stuffed his hands in his pockets and started heading down the road. Dipper paused, looking back at the door through which they had come. There it stood, buried in a dark red tree stump at the side of the road.   
“Will we be able to find the door again?” Dipper asked. 

“Probably.” Roronoa called over his shoulder with a careless wave of his hand. Dipper hesitated before following after him.   
“So…” Dipper asked as they began to walk, the shading leaves overhead creating a patchwork quilt of shadow and light on their skin. Crickets chirped under the carpet of leaves their wandering feet crunched. “So what’s the plan?”   
“Plan?”   
“Yeah, how are we…like we aren’t…”   
“Turning the girl in?” Roronoa said firmly. “No. Finding her? Yes.” A shadow passed over his face. “She’s probably stuck here, plus she can help us.” 

“How?” Dipper asked confused, and Roronoa looked over at him, a wicked glint in his eye and a vicious bloodthirsty half-cocked smile on his face.   
“She escaped from the Muse right? She must have an idea on how to fight her control. If she could tell me how she did it, then we’ll be able to go back, beat the demon and rescue the other servants.”   
Dipper felt the awe in his chest expanded slightly as he stared at him.   
“You’re going to double cross a demon?” 

Roronoa looked over at Dipper like he was being stupid. “Duh. Why would I do what she says? It’s a stupid, pointless deal. No matter what we do, someone dies if we play by her rules.”   
They walked for a moment in silence, lost in their own contemplative thoughts, Roronoa’s hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword, Dipper worriedly fiddling with the straps on his backpack.   
“You know…” Dipper said after a moment. “It’s funny. She has servants, why wouldn’t she just send them after the girl? Why send us? People she hardly knows?”

Roronoa frowned, staring directly ahead of them. “I don’t know. Any ideas?” Roronoa asked Dipper, and Dipper couldn’t help feeling a twinge of pride at having been asked.   
“I don’t think she can control people over large distances. That’s why she didn’t send her servants because if she did, she would just have two runaway servants instead of one.”   
“Maybe she can only control what she can see.” Roronoa said, excitement rising in his voice.   
“No,” Dipper said, “That wouldn’t work, she didn’t see us when she was pulling us into the throne room.” 

Roronoa’s shoulders slumped a bit.   
“Maybe she can see through the walls of her castle.” He murmured. “She knew we were there even when a wall was between us. Or maybe…” His words trailed off, he sighed and shook his head. “Truly, she’ll be a worthy opponent.”   
“What?” Dipper said with astonishment.   
“She’s going down. Once I know how to overcome her control.” Roronoa said with a vicious smile. “Beating her will certainly be a challenge.” 

Dipper stared at Roronoa as though he were crazy, but Roronoa wasn’t looking at him, he was staring ahead with his eyes glazed over by a future that hadn’t occurred yet, one that was making his hand clench the hilt of his sword, one that made his eyes twinkle and blaze with bloodlust.   
“You want to fight her?” Dipper said, aghast. His experience with demons and ghosts wasn’t one of success. Every time he had tried to face them, tried to trick them, it had gotten him possessed, helpless and afraid as he watched his body act against his own will. 

“Yes, of course.” Roronoa said, his expression turning stoic again as he threw a glance over at Dipper, as if this were an obvious statement. “I’m not about to just let her beat me like that. You saw how it was in there, how she played us.”   
Dipper stared at the man walking ahead of him, feeling a strange mixture of awe and astonishment. Wondering both how crazy was this man and how he might be able to be crazy along with him. 

“So, like…if you figure out a way to get around her control, what will you do?” Dipper asked, inquisitively, Roronoa threw a glance over his shoulder at Dipper and his eyes glinted like sharpened bits of obsidian.   
“Then you’ll see a fight, kid.”   
They walked, the burning leaves crunching under their boots, the crisp air invigorating the lungs. The woods seemed lovely, strange but lovely and Dipper felt like he could perhaps lie down for a nap in such a place like this and oh, what peaceful dreams he’d have. 

Roronoa had stopped and Dipper didn’t notice until he had bumped into him.   
“Oh sorry, I-” Dipper began and Roronoa shushed him. Dipper froze, listening to the sounds of the forest around them as Roronoa stared into the woods, somewhere off the path.   
“What’s that?” Roronoa whispered, Dipper squinted but couldn’t see anything, just trees of the same burning hues.   
“What?” He asked and Roronoa, his hand held loosely on the hilt of his sword, took a step into the woods and then another, Dipper following close behind like a living shadow.   
“That.” Roronoa answered, pointing with a crinkled looked of disgust at a tree.

Gnarled and twisted like the burning red bark was bubbling, it squatted in the dirt like a toad, hideous and vile. Its creaking, twisting black branches stretched to the sky, oozing from between the fibers of its wood a slimy black tar that made Dipper’s nose crinkle with disgust. It hunched in the shadows of the other trees, as though ashamed of the sunlight, it had no leaves for its branches and notched into its wood was a bleeding face, gaping empty eyes that cried black tears and a gash for a mouth that was agape with a unheard moan. 

“Isn’t that the wood the door was made out of?” Dipper asked softly, taking a step closer to Roronoa. The man squinted as he stared at the tree as though it were a puzzle he was struggling to read, then drawing his sword he took a step forward to poke at one of the tendrils of tar that slithered down the bark’s burning hide.   
“Weird…” he murmured under his breath before suddenly swinging the blade under Dipper’s nose so that Dipper yelped and nearly got the tendril of black goo flung in his face.   
“Here.” Roronoa said, “taste this.” 

“What?” Dipper gasped, horrified, swatting the sword away with annoyance. “No!”   
“Well, usually Luffy would be here to taste test stuff to see if it’s dangerous but he’s not.” Roronoa said with roll of his eyes, as though this were a more than obvious observation.   
“There are other ways of testing if something is dangerous besides tasting it!” Dipper snapped.   
“Tell that to Luffy.” Roronoa said, his eyes glinting with amusement, Dipper sighed with exasperation and decided to move away from Roronoa so as not to get any more unknown substances flung in his face. As he rounded the bow of the tree he frowned, his eyes widened and he quickly took a step back. 

“Roronoa?” Dipper called.   
“What?”   
“Does this look like…regular tree activity to you?”   
Roronoa rounded the trunk to follow Dipper’s gaze, he stared for a moment then slowly shook his head.   
“No. Definitely not.”   
They didn’t look like roots exactly, more like black and shriveled worms, tentacles to pierce the ground, diving and resurfacing again like a swarm of swimming fish, all heading of in a certain direction, a conscious formation that stretched on for as far as the crowded trees would let Dipper see. That wasn’t what bothered him though, it was the blackened shade of the grass, the plants, the other trees that dared to get in the roots’ wake.

It seemed almost like the roots had burned for themselves a direct path to wherever they were heading.   
“Huh. Weird.” Roronoa said with a careless shrug before turning on his heels and heading off in the opposite direction into the woods.   
“Where are you going? Shouldn’t we see where they lead?” Dipper called.   
“Not important.” Roronoa said with a careless wave over his shoulder. 

“Seriously dude?” Dipper said, trotting to catch up with him,   
“Seriously.” Roronoa answered with indeed all levels of solemnity. “We’re on a time crunch, remember? Worry about your gardening woes later, unless you think the girl and the roots are heading to the same place.”   
Dipper opened his mouth to consider this option, then closed it again because the man had a point but Dipper wasn’t ready to admit it.   
They walked on at that pace, crunching through brambles and underbrush, much to Dipper’s discomfort and much to Roronoa’s indifference. 

“We almost at the road again yet?” Dipper called, and Roronoa looked back at him with shrewd blinking eyes.   
“Road?”   
Dipper stopped walking.   
“We’re heading back to the road, right?” Roronoa pursed his lips, looking off to the side thoughtfully.   
“Hmm…probably not.”   
“What?” Dipper demanded.   
“If we find it again that’d be nice.” Roronoa said with a careless shrug. 

“Nice? What do you mean by nice? You know where we’re going, right?”   
Roronoa looked at Dipper with a mellow contemplative air that told his answer and also said that he wasn’t that bothered by his answer either.   
Dipper felt his eyes grow wide, felt his jaw drop as he stared at the man.   
“You…you have no idea where we’re going?? But you’re a sailor! You had a ship! You know how to navigate, don’t you??”  
“No. Nami’s our navigator.” 

“But we didn’t even go that far, did we?” Dipper demanded, looking this way and that, searching for something he recognized, something to show him the way back to the road but it all looked so similar, so much of the same thing, more trees, more woods, no road. “How…what CAN you do!?” Dipper demanded sharply, whirling on the swordsman “Besides getting us lost and hedging your bets against a demon!”   
“Apparently I also waste my time saving ungrateful brats like you.” Roronoa said matter-of-factly and Dipper flinched at how much the unfeeling, frigid words stung. “I’m a swordsman, not a navigator. And you’re a child, not a hero. Let’s not kid ourselves, alright?” Roronoa said, looking this way and that, examining the trees before picking a direction seemingly at random. 

“Come on, let’s try this way.”   
“Is it the way out?” Dipper snapped coldly, but following him anyway.   
Roronoa shrugged, “It’ll take us somewhere eventually.”  
“Maybe the edge of the earth.” Dipper said wistfully as he walked, tilting his head back to gaze morosely at the tree cover, picking out the little bits of blue sky he could see in between the glowing green leaves.   
Maybe he could find Mabel there at the edge of the world…

They walked on at that pace for a long time, Dipper’s legs began to ach and his head began to feel light from all the fresh air and exercise. Roronoa didn’t seemed bothered by it, in fact he didn’t seemed bothered by anything. He continued to walk with that eternal scowl and Dipper wondered what could make the man in such a constant bad mood.   
“So where are you from?” Dipper asked suddenly, his voice shattering the silence that had enveloped them in a thick blanket. Roronoa looked at him with that crazy look. 

“What? I’m not allowed to ask you stuff? We’re a team now, aren’t we?” Dipper asked with a small apologetic smile, and something toyed in the edges of Roronoa’s eyes, amusement perhaps?   
“I’m from California.” Dipper offered, watching as Roronoa’s eyebrows furrowed slightly in confusion before he added gruffly.   
“East Blue.” Roronoa replied and Dipper nodded thoughtfully as if he knew where that was.   
“So how’d you end up here?” Dipper asked, as Roronoa carelessly leaped over a fallen log and Dipper awkwardly scrambled after him. 

Roronoa seemed to think about it for a while and sighed.   
“Long story.”   
Dipper wanted to point out that they didn’t exactly have a lot to do but paused when he saw that he might be wrong.   
“What’s that?” He pointed to a sign that hung from a nearby tree. Roronoa frowned at it.   
“Pottsfield? What the hell’s a Pottsfield?”   
“Whatever it is, it’s one mile away. Maybe the girl went there.” Dipper suggested and Roronoa nodded thoughtfully. 

“Probably.” He said and started to head sharply to the right of the sign.   
“That’s not the right way.” Dipper called, and Roronoa scowled at him.   
“And suddenly you’re an expert?” Roronoa said with a roll of his eyes.   
“No I just…ugh, never mind.” Dipper sighed and taking the lead headed down to Pottsfield.   
“Hey Roronoa?” Dipper asked as they came to a tramped dirt path that was practically bliss on Dipper’s aching feet, he wasn’t sure how many roots he’d tripped over or brambles he’d stomped. He was getting awfully tired though. “Have you ever fought a demon before?”   
“Why?” 

“I’m looking for this demon, his name is Bill. He’s somewhere in the Ghost Zone…at least I think he is.”   
“And?”   
“Well, I need to find him so I can, well I mean, I helped kill him once before but I just want to make sure he stays dead.” Dipper said, the trees were beginning to thin and crouched in between the forest trees was a cute little town that looked like Gravity Falls on Pioneer Day. Old-fashioned white painted houses crouched around the tall steeple of a church in the middle of a hewed out clearing where crops grew in a haphazard and untended manner. Pumpkin plants grew rotting pumpkins and corn stalks stood withered, brown and untouched despite their ripeness.   
No smoke issued from any chimneys, no sound could be heard save for the distant cry of birds. Roronoa’s shoulder sagged as he sighed happily and headed down the road towards the town.   
“Um-” Dipper called, running to catch up with Roronoa. “Maybe…”   
“What? You wanted to come here didn’t you?” Roronoa asked, though his words lacked their usual level of harshness, if anything he seemed tired.   
“Yeah, I did but it doesn’t…well, my friend Danny told me ghosts were vicious.” 

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s here.” Roronoa said, snapping a brown cob off of its stalk, ripping back its thin papery wrappings to reveal its bulging golden kernels tangled with silk. Roronoa brushed off the silks with a wave of his hand and greedily bit into the raw cob of corn, sighing with contentment before handing it over to Dipper for a bite.   
“Want some?” Roronoa asked and Dipper wavered, remember all the stories he’d read in his late night summer readings, stories that sometimes took his heroes to other worlds where the food was always tainted and always came with punishment when stolen. But his stomach growled, resounding loudly in his empty stomach and that closed the matter as he took the cob from Roronoa and took a bite.

He’d never had raw corn before, it tasted plainer without the usual helping of butter and crunchier and it seemed to be coated in a thin layer of something, he suspected it might be dust but it was good all the same as he handed it back to Roronoa and the man took another happy bite.  
“So why are you hunting a demon that’s already dead?” Roronoa wondered, handing the cob back to Dipper, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, when Dipper passed their cob back to Roronoa he did the same. 

“I need him to stay dead, if he stays dead he…” Dipper paused as Roronoa finished off their cob and threw it into the field and plucked a fresh one from the untended crops. Dipper didn’t finished his sentence, it sounded stupid even in his thoughts and he was worried Roronoa would laugh at him. If Bill stayed dead, he wouldn’t come after Dipper. Dipper and Mabel and their Grunkles would be safe, Dipper could sleep in peace and not see that dreaded triangle’s shadow lurking on his wall. If he could just assure himself that Bill was gone, Dipper could get on with his life.  
“Hmm…” Roronoa murmured to himself, he seemed lost in thought as he looked about the houses that now surrounded them. They seemed cleaned, polished but empty. 

An eeriness hung thick in the air, no one spoke of it though, for to speak would be to turn it into reality, giving it skin and breath life into it for it to slink out of the shadows towards them. A barn door creaked and rattled in the breeze somewhere and Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin at the sharp sound. He hurried to keep up with Roronoa but then thought better of it when he noticed that Roronoa seemed to have veered towards the noise and for what felt like the hundredth time, Dipper was forced to reevaluate his alliance with this man. They walked down the footpath, passing open doors and gardens of only freshly wilting flowers towards where the barn doors were hung wide and a large turkey the size of a small donkey ample about. 

“Holy shit.” Dipper gasped at the sight of the untended beast happily pecking in the wake of the empty doorway, through which only darkness loomed.   
“Well, we know Luffy hasn’t been here.” Roronoa murmured and Dipper, taking a moment to gap at the wild beast, let his eyes travel past it to the empty barn where shadows only lurked. He stared and as he did so he thought he saw something in the darkness move.   
Frowning he dug into his backpack for a flashlight, gave it a small whack until it flickered into light and shined it into the barn, surveying the dusty hay and the rusty farming tools and the skeleton feet that dangled from the rafters.   
Dipper felt his mouth go dry as he tilted his flash light up and up, where skeletons hung dejected looking, their bones rattling in the breeze, their jaws lulling on their chests with dark ropes twisted around their necks, woven in between the joints of their wrists, knotted over their spines and through their hollow eye sockets. No, not ropes, vines. Dipper shown his flashlight over the walls of the barn and saw the same black vines scaling up the walls, unsettling like shadows, the wood upon which they climbed had nearly rotted away, buckling under the leech that demanded it support them. Dipper took a few steps to the right, to gaze off to the side of the barn, he saw a familiar trail of blackened grass, weaving in between wilting flowers and withered corn stalks and headed off in the direction of the woods. 

“It’s the roots, from that weird tree.” Dipper said, his voice sounding meek and hollow as he came back to where Roronoa was but tearing his eyes away from the gut roiling sight, turned to see only empty air for him to talk to, Roronoa was busy approaching the dangling skeletons.   
“What are you doing?!” Dipper hissed at Roronoa in horror.   
“Just looking.” Roronoa said carelessly, his hand resting relaxed and careless on his sword hilt, squinting at the skeletons with that puzzled expression he had with the tree.   
“Don’t touch that stuff, whatever you do.” Dipper said, inching closer, for he didn’t like standing by himself in this eerie ghost town. 

“Unless you’d care to join them.” Roronoa muttered.   
“What’s it doing to them?” Dipper wondered, inching ever-closer still until he was standing with Roronoa nearly under the swaying skeletons, but as Dipper watched he suddenly realized he didn’t want the answer.   
The roots were curled around the skeletons, encasing some faster than others, for some there was only a foot or knucklebone exposed, for others only the tips of the finest roots were the only things keeping them aloft. 

“Decoration.” Roronoa said with a roll of his eyes. “How should I know?”   
Then the wind blew, the barn door creaked, the bones rattled and their jaws moving this way and that, teeth gnashing against one another.   
“Beware…” The wind moans, wailing in between the teeth of the swaying skeleton. Dipper screamed and jumped so hard he dropped his flashlight, he staggered back, to get as far away from the bones as possible. Their odious song followed him.   
“Beware the Beast. Beware the night, beware the sleep, beware what lives underneath….Beware…beware…beware…” 

Dipper stood, shivering in the icy wind that snaked down his neck, listening to the sounds of the wailing voices that encircled him.   
“Ah, nopenopenopenope. I’m out. I’m done.” Dipper said, looking over to Roronoa, who hadn’t screamed, who actually had done very little save for the fact that he gripped his sword a little tighter and glared into the wind like it was mocking him. When he did move, he took a step closer to the skeletons. 

“We’re looking for a girl.” Roronoa said, the empty eye sockets seemed to watch him, their heads lulling this way and that, their jawbones set askew. Dipper gaped at Roronoa.   
“You’re asking them for directions?”   
“We need to find her or many will die, can you help us?” Roronoa said, promptly ignoring Dipper. The wind blew again, the bones rattled against one another and Dipper clutched at his ears but the wind snuck in between his fingers and whispered with that eerie moaning voice. 

“Long hair like summer wheat, eyes like pieces of the afternoon sky…”   
“Yes, yes, that’s her! Where is she?” Roronoa shouted to be heard over the wind.   
“Beware...beware, she’s lost in the darkest part of the woods…beware, beware….” Then the wind died down and voices were reduced to an eerie whisper.   
“Never,” Dipper said, peeling his hands away from his ears with a scowl. “Never do that again.”   
But Roronoa only shrug with a cruel sort of sneer. “What? We got our answer didn’t we? So let’s get out of here.” And with that he turned away and began heading up out of the village again. Dipper made to follow him but paused to look back at the swaying skeletons.

“Shouldn’t we…um…help them?” Dipper called after Roronoa, but Roronoa was already out of earshot, heading down the road leading out of the village (actually sort of in the right direction for once). Dipper wavered and bite his lip, looking first up at the skeletons, yellow bones slowly rotting in the shadows, and then down at the roots trailing away into the forest. Like with the last tree he had seen, it seemed to burn the forest away from it, so that thick shadows seem to lurk behind every tree truck, watching and waiting for him and amongst the branches he thought he saw something move. He shuddered and looked back up at the skeletons.   
“I’m sorry,” he whispered and ran to catch up to Roronoa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, I hope you enjoy the new chapter! This will probably be the last chapter I post until exams are done *sniffs back the tears* see you when I'm finally free! :D :D


	5. Ideological Squaring

Mabel wasn’t sure where that breeze was coming from, it ruffled her hair with an eerie sensation of fingers and it felt cold down her neck but overall she didn’t mind it, it almost felt like she was having fun, seated on the giant goat’s head behind Luffy so that nothing but the darkness plowed on before them. The boy was grinning with wicked delight, she could see the glint of adventure twinkle in his eye, feel it in the curl of his fingers, the tenseness of the muscles under her arms from where they were wrapped around his waist. With a small little giggle into her shoulder she was reminded of a taunt rubber band. 

The Going Mary (the ship’s name as she was told) sailed through the inky blackness without exactly adhering to any direct for up or down, sometimes the shelves they passed were below them, sometimes above them, when they passed one that was floating sideways, Luffy stretched out a hand to run his hand along the golf course’s smooth grassy turf. Mabel laughed when he found a golf ball to balance on the end of his nose like an otter.   
Like a comet Danny, now freed from the burden of dragging the Pines twins everywhere, zipped through the air, his tail fluttering behind him as he came up alongside them, watching Mabel and Luffy laugh with a peculiarly hurt and angry expression that made Mabel frustrated. What exactly was she doing wrong that had put Danny in such a mood? 

What made him fly beside the ship and only lingering on deck for more than a handful of moments at a time as though the wood might burn him? It bothered her, it distracted her and she needed to stay focus above everything else. She looked down at the eye, still bobbling along in its glass. It hadn’t wavered from staring straight ahead in what felt like hours, of course she couldn’t check her phone to be sure. In one hand she held onto Luffy, which kept her from taking a tumble like her brother had and the other hand held the eye and she was as likely to let it go of that as her own lifeline. It was a tiny little thread of hope that connected her to her brother and it helped her fight against the guilt of how badly she had messed up. She was going to fix this, she was going to get her brother back and everything would be all right. Had she truly been so determined to be entertained? She had sacrificed her brother to her own amusement, and if she never saw him again? If this plan didn’t work? How could she bear to face the weight of her own selfishness? 

“What’s wrong?” Luffy asked, letting the golf ball float away into space, where it floated passed Mabel’s face for a moment before she batted it impatiently away.   
“Nothing.” She lied because everything was wrong. It wasn’t just the sight of Dipper falling into the abyss, it was everything before that. It was the dim light of her desk lamp as she and Dipper sat up into the morning hours to finish the project she’d forgotten about, it was the hunching of Dipper’s shoulders as their parents blamed him for the scraps on the car after she had taken it out for a spin. It was the determination in his eyes as he rescued her from her own sparkling dreams in the prison Bill Cipher had made for her, the prison she had agreed to. 

How much had Dipper sacrificed for her, how much had she let him sacrifice? What kind of a sister was she?   
“Oh, OK.” Luffy said with a careless shrug, swatting at the particles of green dust that floated by.   
“Am I a terrible person?” Mabel suddenly blurted out, her despair getting the better of her before she realized who she was speaking to. Sure the crew was nice enough but they still knew nothing about each other and here she was trying to ask pirates for an analysis of her moral character?   
“What?” Luffy asked, confused. “Oh…I don’t know. I guess you’re OK.”   
“But I’m the reason my brother is missing, that your man Zorro is gone. I was goofing around like I always am and if they die it’ll be my fault.” Mabel said with a sigh, bowing her head so that her hair billowed around her in that ghostly breeze. 

“I’m always goofing around.” Luffy said with a laugh, and when Mabel failed to respond, he twisted his waist around in the middle so that his chest, arms and smiling face were turned towards her.   
“Stop that.” Mabel laughed in disgust as Luffy grabbed her shoulders.   
“Look. Being a ‘good’ person is pointless, Mabel. Do what you want and don’t care what others think of you. It’s the only way you’ll have any fun.” He said, his eyes shinning with mirth and kindness and Mabel sighed.   
“I suppose. That seems the advice that a pirate would give.” She said with a small smirk as Luffy twisted back around so that his legs matched the rest of her body. Luffy only grinned with that carefree smile that consumed most of his face and he looked like he was about to say more when he stopped himself, his eyes wide and staring at something off to her right. 

“Luffy?” Mabel asked, “What’s the matter?” She asked, as Luffy whirled around in his seat to grin at her, his face lit up with excitement like a firefly. Then without responding Luffy stretched his one arm to curl around her waist like a snake and the other shot out and wrapped itself grappling hook style around the main masthead.   
“Hey!” Mabel cried before giggling laughter overtook her words as Luffy flung them into the air, swinging over the darkness in a way that made her stomach reel though she didn’t want to admit it before Luffy dropped the two of them rather unceremoniously on the deck.   
“Nami!” Luffy shouted, dancing from foot to foot excitedly but the crew was already in a whirlwind of action. 

“I saw it, Luffy.” Nami said, slotting three narrow blue bars together into a bo staff.   
“See what?” Mabel asked, still wildly confused, watching Usopp stuff little paper wrapped packages into the many pockets on his person.   
“That!” Luffy cried, taking her by the shoulder and steering her towards the railing of the ship. In the path of Luffy’s pointing finger was an island, on which stood a narrow spired castle that seemed to claw a space for itself in the inky sky, enveloped in faint milky white aura. 

Its stones were stained dark purple and its windows were black like empty eye sockets. Its spires were jagged and rough, like nails and teeth of some great creature that made Mabel feel uneasy. Mingling in the vast courtyard spotted with gnarled and thorny topiaries, seemed to be the frozen affairs of a festival, with tattered ribbons hanging forsakenly in the breeze, green flames crackled in a great fire pit and ghosts dressed in bright tunics and haunting billowing dresses drifting to and fro around a banquet table that Mabel could see from here was loaded with all the sweet delectable imaginable. Sanji and Usopp tilted the sails off course to make a beeline for the castle. 

“Is this really necessary?” Danny asked, already annoyed as he drifted to hover over the deck of the ship.   
“Yes.” Luffy said stoutly, stretching his arms and legs to impossibly flexible angles as he geared up for a fight. He straightened and looked back over to the festival, jugglers juggling their own severed heads, tight rope walkers with limbs twisted backwards and dancers spinning with green tainted fire to music that was sweet and haunting, while bodies skewered on pikes on the castle walls chatted absently with one another. Luffy looked back at Danny with greater resolve in his face. “Yes.”   
Danny sighed, his shoulders sagging as he messaged the bridge of his nose.   
“Alright, what exactly are you going to do?”   
“Just chat.” Nami said calmly as the end of her staff suddenly crackled with electricity. The light reflected in Danny’s wide, concerned eyes, but he pursed his lips and said nothing.   
“You wanna come?” Luffy asked Mabel and she blinked, taken aback. 

“Oh…I’m not really-”  
“I’ll be fun,” Luffy chimed, his eyes glimmering with delight, “and think of all the food we’ll have to eat at the end of it!”   
Mabel didn’t think she was famished enough to relate to the wicked gleam in the boy’s eye and she doubted if she’ll ever feel that hungry. She looked to the fast approaching island.   
“They’re ghosts, it’s not like we’re going to hurt them. Just shake them up a bit.” Nami said with a smirk.   
“I don’t really know how to fight that well. Just boxing lessons from my Grunkle Stan.” Mabel admitted shyly. 

“We’ll cover that part, you can just wreck havoc and have fun.” Luffy said with a wink as their ship drew closer and he let out a wild cry that seemed to shake the ship and made the ghosts stare at them with wide red eyes and gaping mouths. Most of them scattered as the crew landed with thumps onto tables amongst the array of marvelous food and glittering wines but a few brave ghosts lingered, their hands glowing with red and green flames.   
“Finally, some fun!” Luffy cried, running at the ghosts, his extended fists swinging about like whips, Nami’s spear crackled, Ussop’s slingshot sent flaming and exploding cherry bombs raining down on the crowd, Sanji ducked and weaved as he lashed out with powerful kicks that sent his opponents reeling. 

“Jeesh.” Danny said, hovering by Mabel’s side. “This is a disaster.”   
“Mabel, come on!” Luffy shouted, ducking a fireball and barreling into the creature shoulder first. Mabel hesitated, biting her lip.   
“You’re not seriously considering this?” Danny demanded, “Mabel, these guys are crazy. Don’t-”   
But Mabel had made up her mind, she got up onto the rail, wavered for a moment, then without a backwards glance she leapt. 

Why? Because Dipper was gone and without him she felt empty, guilty. If she was going to a horrible person, might as well go all the way. Her boots hit the table and she drop kicked the nearest ghost’s head. It detached itself from its shoulders and went soaring, the remaining body left to feel the empty space where its head had been and fumbling around blindly for it.   
“Nice of you to join us!” Sanji cried with a grin, throwing her sword he had wrestled free from one of the knightly ghosts. It was coated in rust and grim and Mabel had not the slightly idea what to do with it but she didn’t care, she swung it about her head like a baseball bat. 

“A little more grace will do you wonders, my dear.” Nami called, jabbing a ghost with her staff so to make it crackle.   
“Not that you’re not already graceful.” Sanji said with an encouraging smile, kneeing a ghost in the face that had snuck up on Mabel.   
“Give one of these a swirl.” Ussop said, throwing her a belt of his exploding ammo. She grinned, throwing liberally and hitting targets with great success. Each successful blast made their island quiver like a strummed guitar string.   
The ghosts began to scatter, running towards the drawbridge of their half crumpling castle. Luffy was practically weeping with delight as he shoved a liberal portion of ham into his mouth, collecting pastries into his arms and raising a turkey leg over his head with a meat muffled cry of victory. 

The rest of the crew whooped and patted Mabel on the back as the ground under their feet began to shake, a massive hand with claws the size of Mabel’s arm curled around the top of the wall, followed by a grinning smile filled with green dripping fangs and slited yellow eyes.   
“COOL!” Luffy yelled, twisting his fist around on his wrist, literally winding up for another fight as the massive snake thing reared back his head to give a rather contrasting repetition cry.   
“Retreat!” Nami shouted, she and Ussop already running. 

“Grab the food!” Sanji cried Mabel had only a few loafs of bread in her arms before a pair of hands were pulling her up into the air, she gasped as green fire leaped around her and brushed the edges of her toes as she flew. She looked up to see Danny clutching her, flying her back up to the ship.   
“Hey!” She shouted crossly.   
“What? You’re welcome.” Danny said with annoyance flashing in his eyes. “Would you prefer I let that overgrown lizard roast you?”   
She huffed as Danny set her on the deck as the crew scrambled over the side like ants, their arms laden with food and Sanji’s arms laden with Luffy. 

“Come on, we can take him!” Luffy was shouting, as he bared his teeth in a predator’s smile.   
“Luffy no!” Nami shouted as she snapped at Mabel to arrange the sails. Mabel struggled to imitate what she had seen Ussop do many times before as Sanji, Luffy and Danny rounded on the serpent as it uncoiled itself. It looked to be reminiscent of a Chinese dragon, with long mustache tentacles waving on either side of his face like a catfish, he had no wings much to Mabel’s disappointed as his lissome body coiled around and around itself, its dark purple scales winking in the ghostly light.   
“Great.” Danny said, scowling harshly at Luffy as his fists crackled with lively green flames. “I blame you for this.” 

“That’s fair.” Luffy noted as he casually snapped Ussop’s gaping mouth closed, jolting the boy out of his stupor so he could properly scream. “Come on!” Luffy shouted and took a running leap towards the creature. Danny groaned and flew after him, his eyes ablaze with green. Luffy was laughing and Sanji had freshly lit a cigarette using the leaping green flames of the dragon, pausing only a moment to inhale a draft before exhaling green smoke and continuing on up the dragon’s coiling body. Ussop fired darts from his slingshot while simultaneously screaming and crying while Nami got annoyed and shouted at Mabel instructions how to set the sails property.

Chaos swirled around her and Mabel couldn’t help it, she laughed. Adrenaline raced through her as fire sailed over their heads, as the boys fought and slashed at the giant beast, as everything tumbled together and for a moment Mabel didn’t feel so empty anymore. By the time the ship was moving, Mabel looked back in time to see Luffy falling through the abyss, fire leaping around as he tumbled seemingly lifeless, his hat drifting in the opposite direction. Mabel screamed, panic striking her but the boy was awake in a moment, grabbing his hat and expending his arm to grab at the main mass and pull himself in like an overzealous Spiderman cosplay. 

“Full speed ahead!” He cried, as Sanji and Danny crawled back on deck, a bit of Danny’s hair was smoking and his eyebrows looked a little scorched, he looked positively beaten and livid all at once. The ship gave a jolt as it took off, the serpent let out an angered cry and twisted through the air, spinning its body around and around like a corkscrew to follow them.   
“Great!” Danny growled.   
“Load the cannons!” Luffy shouted, seeming more pleased at the sound of himself giving orders than actually expecting the orders to be obeyed. 

“Cannons?” Danny gaped incredulously before with a roll of his eyes and a ghostly growl of annoyance he shot up into the air, his tail fluttering behind him before he stopped in the path of the beast.   
“Danny!” Mabel cried in a panic as Danny took in a deep breath that arched his back, filled his chest like a balloon and screamed. It was more than a scream, it came from the pit of the soul, it was a wail that was made out of misery and rage and the power that came from it. It sounded like the scream the wind makes when it was caught in a gale, it sounded like the noise a mother makes when she clutches her dead baby, it was the laugh of death and quiet whisper of betray. 

Mabel clutched at her ears in agony and dropped to her knees, she could see the waves of sound roll off of Danny, shaking the very air around him. The serpent writhed in the air in agony, catching the full brunt of it. Mabel could see the scale being ripped from its skin, turning around it in a ghastly rain of glittering purple. It screamed and scrambled over itself to retreat back into the void through which it had come. With the monster gone, the noise died off on Danny’s lips. He slumped and fluttered through the air like a falling leaf, spinning and spinning, steering himself towards the ship to land clumsily and collapse to the deck in a heap. 

“Danny!” Mabel cried, rushing up to him. He looked haggard, dark circles rimmed his eyes, the edges of his form blurred slightly like a smudged photograph as he shakily got to his hands and knees.   
“That was so awesome!” Luffy shouted, running up to Danny and crouching beside with an excited glint in his eye. “What was that? How did you do it? Can you teach me how to do that?”   
Danny turned on Luffy, his eyes flashing with bright green fire. 

“You almost got all of us killed!” Danny shouted, getting to his feet in a staggering stumbling motion but he was too anger to note his own unsteadiness. “And you think this is some sort of a game?”   
Luffy blinked, surprised but not offended.  
“I didn’t risk anything. My crew is as capable as they come, I knew we could do it.”   
“But you couldn’t! You would be dead if it weren’t for me!” Danny snarled. 

“Like I said, I knew my crew could handle it.” Luffy said with shy little smile and Danny’s anger blazed up, it glowed bright green in his eyes and in the back of his mouth when he spoke.   
“I’m not apart of your stupid crew! I had my own crew before I got them killed! You’d risk the lives of your men for something as stupid as…as food?!”  
Luffy opened his mouth to reply but Mabel touched his arm.   
“Danny-” She began and he whirled on her and she was struck by the fire that burned inside him, she could see it glowing through his chest, a luminescent orb of green light so bright it was almost white. 

“And you! You’d just go along with them? With this craziness? Why? You don’t even know these people!”   
“Yes I do! They’re our friends, Danny!”   
“They’re not good people.”   
“Well neither am I!” Mabel screamed, “And if you’re too high and mighty for them, if you’re too high and mighty for me maybe you should just leave and we’ll find Dipper without you!”   
Danny scrunched up his face in a blazing anger, looking between Mabel and the crew, his chest blazing with the glow of his spirit, his eyes mostly complied of green and the flames crackling like electricity around his fingers. His limbs trembled, his eyes narrowed. Then he shot off into the air, his tail dragging behind him. Regret spiked through Mabel’s heart, she raced to the edge of the ship.  
“Danny, wait!” she cried but he was nothing but a streak of green in the darkness and then he vanished altogether.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *bursts from the ocean of books with a gasp, crawls onto the shore with a cough, shakes boots free of paperclips and assignment sheet*   
> Hello again, my dears! I hope you didn't miss me too much, school's almost over and with summer I hope to start updating again soon. Thank you for all your patience and your support, I hope you enjoy the new chapter!


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